


nothing else but change

by Katbelle



Category: Daredevil (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Best Friends, Blood and Injury, Cultural References, Episode: s01e10 Nelson v. Murdock, Foggy is a great friend, Friendship, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Matt almost dies but that's canon, Missing Scene, Swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-07
Updated: 2015-06-07
Packaged: 2018-04-03 07:59:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4093153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Katbelle/pseuds/Katbelle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>He can't just leave, no matter how much he wants to, no matter how pissed and angry at Matt he is</em>.</p><p>Foggy stays with Matt the whole day after Matt's fight with Nobu and the outing of his secret. This is what  happens when the camera isn't on them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	nothing else but change

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tj_teejay](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tj_teejay/gifts).



> Written for [this prompt](http://daredevilkink.dreamwidth.org/1742.html?thread=3197902#cmt3197902) over at the Daredevil kink meme. 1x10 was a great episode, but it was hardly enough. I'd gladly watch five bottle episodes devoted solely to Matt and Foggy's friendship.

**nothing else but change**

_Loss is nothing else but change, and change is Nature's delight._  
Marcus Aurelius

***

The sound of a crash sends him running towards the roof. He's infinitely grateful for the roof access that Matt's apartment has and for the fact that Matt rarely closes that door. Sure, Foggy is entirely capable of forcing Matt's front door open, but he'd rather--not. It's enough that Mrs. Dunberg from 6B side-eyes him every time she sees him; he doesn't need her to call the police on him.

"Matt?" he asks as he stands at the top of the stairs. The apartment looks normal, steeped in its usual darkness. Matt only ever turns the lights on when Foggy is visiting. And Karen, now, probably for Karen too.

He moves down the stairs, breathing heavily. Damn those stairs. Damn the anxiety, the little pinpricks of worry. "It's me," he announces to the seemingly empty room. No sound comes from anywhere. No moan, indicating that Matt fell or is hurt or needs help. _But what if he hit his head and is unconscious?_ , Foggy's mind supplements, ever helpful. Damn. 

"I heard a crash," he carries on, because the sound of his voice distracts him from the deathly — ha, _deathly_ , and this is so not the time — silence pressing on him from all sides of the apartment. "Not the fun, sexytime kind, but--more of the 'I fell and can't get up' variety."

It's then that he notices the door to Matt's bedroom, bent, broken, out of its hinges. Beyond it a lamp, also broken, lying on the floor. _Jesus._

"Matt?"

He takes the last step and his foot lands on something with a crack. He steps back quickly, as if burned, and looks down; the last step of Matt's staircase, the landing, the whole wood panelling of it is _broken_ , as if someone dropped something big and heavy on it, as if someone dropped, say, the body of a grown man on it. But no, it's more than dropped, 'dropped' would have resulted in dents to the wood, maybe; this looks more as if someone _slammed_ the _body of a grown man_ into the floor.

Foggy looks back to the lamp, his mind working furiously and churning out the worst case scenarios like mad. Someone broke into Matt's apartment, there was obviously a fight — Matt put up a fight, brave and utterly reckless Matt — and someone slammed Matt into the floor. Foggy can almost hear the sound of bones breaking, a spine cracking, and _fuck_ , this is not what he needs to focus on, because _where the hell is Matt_.

He grabs Matt's stick and lifts it like he would his trusted baseball bat. "If anyone who's in here is not supposed to be here, I will mess you up, I'm not kidding."

And he's not, is the point. He will mess them up. He will hit them with Matt's stick, will not hesitate to break it over their heads, because this is _Matt's apartment_ , this was supposed to be the space where nothing bad would have happened, to Matt, to anyone — no surprise open manholes, no assholes sticking out their legs to trip people, no dangers of the modern asshole world — and if someone broke in here, if someone came here to hurt--Well. Foggy would hurt them in return.

He notices the shadow before he sees the boots or hears the heavy breathing. The Man in Black walks in — though that's putting it in generous terms, he rather drags himself by the sheer force of will if the extensive wounds that Foggy spies on him are any indication. Foggy feels as if someone suddenly poured a bucket of ice cold water over him. Panic. It's panic.

"Where's Matt?" he asks. Because damn it, if the Man in Black is here, who knows what happened to Matt. Foggy's unruly mind takes a second to note that if _Matt_ is the reason the Man in Black looks half dead on his feet then Matt is handier with self-defence and knives than Foggy expected. Foggy quickly tells his mind to _shut up_ and grips Matt's cane harder. "What did you do to him?"

The Man in Black doesn't answer. Foggy only has a moment to blink before the Man almost folds in half and collapses, falls to his knees with a _thud_ and then falls sideways onto the floor. The light from the billboard outside falls onto his chest and _shit_ , his wounds look much worse than Foggy thought at first, there's no way a knife held by a blind man could have done such damage. In Foggy's half-assed medical opinion it's a miracle the guy is still alive.

Foggy pokes the guy with the end of Matt's stick. Gravely wounded or not, this is still a man who blew up half of Hell's Kitchen and killed countless people. Foggy's not taking any risks with him, especially since he still needs to find out what the Man did with his best friend. But-- _Shit fuck damn_. Foggy can't have his only source of information _die_ on the floor of Matt's apartment; when he gets Matt back — and it's 'when', not 'if' because Foggy will find Matt, he _will_ — he will be pissed if he finds out that someone bled on his panelling so much. Matt hates the smell of blood, Foggy knows, just like he knows it's a smell that tends to linger and that blood is difficult to wash out of wood.

He takes out his phone and dials 911. He looks at the Man in Black and takes in his billboard-illuminated profile. His breathing is raspy, as if something was obstructing his airways. Foggy cancels the call and slowly, cautiously, creeps closer to the lying figure. He crouches next to the Man, and yes, there is definitely something wrong with the way he breathes. Maybe a broken nose. Maybe a bruised throat? Or some damage to his lungs, shit, he shouldn't have killed that call. But there's also something--almost familiar about the figure. The angle of his body. The shape of his chin, the line of his jaw. Those lips, Foggy _knows_ those lips, knows every single curve they are capable of--

\--Foggy reaches and tugs the mask up, and isn't it curious, it doesn't have any holes, it's just a piece of black cloth, he never noticed before--

"Matt?"

The world around him comes to a halt, everything stills for a moment. The lips of his best friend are parted in a raspy breath, the eyes of his best friend are closed, and the body of his best friend — the _half-dead body_ , his mind offers — lies on the floor of his best friend's apartment, oozing blood onto his best friend's flooring. Foggy experiences a surreal moment of frozen contemplation when he fully expects Matt to open his eyes and grin up at him, laugh at him because _bad jokes are back from the dead, Nelson_ and fuck, no, no dead jokes. No--no, no _dead_ period.

And then everything rushes back to him, and it slams Foggy with the awareness that the Man in Black is his best friend, that his blind best friend Matt, brave and utterly reckless _Matt_ is the Man in Black, Jesus H. Christ on a stick, Matt is a _criminal_ \--

Matt is currently bleeding out and his breathing is way past 'raspy' and straight on its way to 'nonexistent', and Foggy scrambles to take out his phone again, struggles to hit the right buttons, 9-1-1, because crap, his hands are shaking and his best friend is the masked criminal and his best friend is _dying_ \--

\--and his best friend is holding his wrist and is struggling to say something, and it should say a lot about Foggy, the fact that he leans in a little to listen to that lying, _dying_ bastard--

"No--hospitals," Matt rasps out and Foggy thinks that he's never sounded dumber.

"You're kidding me, right?" he asks, aware of the fact that his voice carries a note of hysteria in it. "You're bleeding, Matt, you're literally lying in the pool of your own blood--"

"--what is your emergency?" says a voice on the other side of the connection, and Foggy realises that he missed the click of the phone call getting through.

He readies himself for what he has to say — _yes, hi, my friend has been hurt and might possibly be dying, how did that happen? he's a fucking vigilante, that's how_ — when a fist connects with his hand and he drops the phone. He looks down at Matt, whose arm has just dropped uselessly onto his stomach, which in turn prompted him to moan in pain. He then looks to his phone, also useless and also on the floor.

"Claire," Matt breathes. "Call--Claire."

"You just took a swing at me, Matt, _what the hell_ , you need a hospital."

"No--hospitals," Matt repeats. He moves his hand, drags it from his stomach — a rim of his shirt catches on the edge of the giant cut on his side, _Jesus_ — and rests it on a pocket of his trousers. He'd probably pat it if he had the strength to. "Phone--Claire."

Foggy has no will to argue with him now, and he also knows intimately just how stubborn a stubborn Matt Murdock can be. He has no idea who Claire is — maybe a doctor? maybe she's a private doctor that Matt has, just like mobsters do, and that is _not_ the best train of thought — but he takes out a phone, _the_ burner phone, fuck, of course, and he pulls up the contact list. There's only one number there, and Foggy presses 'dial'.

Claire picks up after a beat. "Matt?" she asks, nervous. She has a nice voice, very kind.

"Uh, no," Foggy says and looks down at Matt again, and the bastard has the decency to _smile_ weakly. "I'm Foggy. I'm Matt's--"

"I know," Claire says and isn't that interesting. She _knows_ , she knows about him, she knows who he is. "Is Matt okay?"

The pool of blood is getting slightly bigger. Foggy thinks he can feel it start to soak through his trousers. "Not exactly," he says. "Could you--"

"Where?" Claire asks and Foggy can hear her moving, a clink that clearly says she's throwing some stuff together.

"Matt's apartment, I don't know if you--"

"I'll be there in thirty," Claire tells him, her voice taking on an authoritative tone as she hangs up.

Foggy drops he burner phone onto the ground. It deals with the impact much better than his smartphone. 

"Jesus fucking Christ, God _damnit_ ," Foggy lets out, acutely aware that this is blasphemy and taking the Lord's name in vain, and normally Matt would wince but say nothing, and now Matt _also_ winces and _also_ says nothing, but it's more likely due to his injuries and not Foggy's lack of respect.

Foggy cannot bring himself to respect anything at the moment.

"Thank--s," Matt manages, and it sounds as if someone punched it out of him, breathless and tiny and full of pain. "Fog--"

"Fucking _hell_ , Matt, what the _fuck_." Foggy doesn't really curse a lot. Sure, he can throw a 'wanker' or an 'asshole' around, but he tends not to overdo it. It takes a lot to make him speak like this. "What the fuck are you doing, Jesus, Matt, fuck, what the fuck did you _think_ \--"

"Foggy--"

"Don't 'Foggy' me, you're barely alive, you should be in a hospital, fuck, you shouldn't be here like this _at all_ , but you _weren't_ thinking, fuck, the fuck, Matt, _the fuck_."

Matt hiccups at that, sort of, sobs, kind of, his breath lodges deep in his chest and Foggy cannot hear him exhale. "Sorry," he slurs, "'m sorry, sorry, so sorry..."

His head lolls to the side. Fuck. It takes Foggy a moment to realise that the only sound present now is his _own_ breathing, angry and scared puffs, but no raspy sounds, no wheezing sounds, no nothing. He can _feel_ himself go pale and his gaze travels down Matt's abused and _unmoving_ chest.

Fuck.

"No," he says. " _No._ "

He shrugs off his jacket and throws it onto one of Matt's armchairs. His left hand goes under Matt's back — he can feel the long deep gashes there, what the fuck happened to you, Matt — and moves Matt's body so that he is lying fully on his back, prone on the floor.

"You," he states, "are _not_ going to die, you hear me, Murdock? Ain't gonna happen."

He drags his shirtsleeves up and over his elbows. He tips Matt's head back, and presses his ear to his chest. Nothing. Shit fuck damn, crap, _crap_ , of course.

He never thought that he'd be glad that he's wasted almost eleven years of his life watching _Grey's Anatomy_ and various other medical dramas, but there we go, he's glad. He's glad, because he never had a proper first aid training, and yet here he was, knowing his stuff. Well, sort of. Enough to pull this off, hopefully.

"You are not dying," Foggy says, each word accompanied by a press of his hands against Matt's chest. Four, five, six-- "You are not dying. Hear me? You're not. Period. End of discussion." Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen-- "I am not letting you die, Matt Murdock."

Twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty. Foggy puts one hand on Matt's jaw and tips his head back again, uses the other hand to pinch Matt's nose. Two breaths, one, two.

"I do not _allow you_ to die, Matt, alright?" Shit, there might be tears on his face. He can't be crying now, he needs to _see_. "I do not allow you to die, you fucking asshole. Don't you dare. You have to be alright. You have to _live_ , so that I can kick your ass. I need to get pissed at you, and I can't do that if you're dead. You can't die. You just _can't_ , alright, please, Matty, _please_ just don't die on me, not like this, Matt, _Matt_ \--"

Thirty presses. Two breaths. Thirty presses. His arms are beginning to tire, they're not strong enough, he should do something about that, perhaps start lifting weights? Two breaths. That might be a good idea. Thirty presses, two breaths, thirty presses, two breaths, thirty-presses-two-breaths-thirty-presses--

Matt coughs. Foggy feels like he could collapse next to him in a weeping pile of mess, so he does exactly that.

***

Claire is not exactly what Foggy expected. She's beautiful, tall, dark-haired, with a kind smile to go with that kind voice of hers. Not a doctor, but a nurse, carrying a giant bag full of medical supplies.

Claire is kind enough not to mention his tear-streaked face, puffy and red-rimmed eyes or the bloodied trousers when he opens the door of Matt's apartment to let her in. She moves in a confident manner, clearly familiar with the space. She must have been here before. It should probably sting, the knowledge that Matt shared his secret with someone and that someone wasn't Foggy. It should sting, but it doesn't, not yet anyway; it will, once the adrenaline rush is gone and his arms don't ache so much and Foggy can breathe again, not only listen for the sound of someone else's breathing.

Claire kneels by the couch on which Foggy has managed to deposit an unconscious, but breathing, _breathing_ , Matt. Every single one of his medical dramas says that you shouldn't move a person with an unknown extent of injuries, but Matt was standing, was moving, before he collapsed so it cannot be his spine, plus Foggy couldn't just--leave him on the floor. Where there was a big, bloody stain now.

Fuck.

"Could you help me?" Claire asks and Foggy is by her side in a second. She hands him a pair of scissors. "Some of his injuries are extensive, I can't just work around his shirt. I need you to cut it off."

Foggy nods and gets to work, starts from the bottom of the shirt and cuts upwards, across Matt's stomach and chest, then sideways, down his arms. Soon he takes the shirt off in pieces. He hears Claire inhale sharply, and yup, he feels slightly faint too.

God.

Claire touches the bruise forming in the middle of Matt's chest, taps it with her fingers, gently. "CPR?" she asks and Foggy nods.

"Yeah," he answers, voice raspy. Raspy, ha. Matt was dying. Matt almost died, under his hands. For a brief time Foggy held his life in his hands, his clumsy hands, and what if he had let it go, what if it had slipped between his fingers, what if Foggy hadn't been enough and it was already too late to call an ambulance and what if--

"It won't bruise too badly," Claire comments, also gentle. She's being gentle for him. She reaches into her bag and takes out gauze and swabs, a bottle of disinfectant. "You did a good job."

"Yeah," Foggy repeats.

He watches as Claire cleans the wounds on Matt's stomach and chest. She prods the one on his abdomen, hisses when her gloved fingers come in contact with it, as if it was her that was wounded, as if it pained _her_.

"This is one is simply god-awful," she says. "It's not a stab wound, looks more like it was done with a hook--It's uneven, I think the hook just caught on the flesh at one point and then someone _pulled_ \--It's a miracle this missed any vital organs."

"Yeah," Foggy says for the third time. Swallows. "Do you--do you have to narrate?"

Claire turns to him and her expression goes sheepish. "I'm sorry," she murmurs. From her bag she takes out a surgical needle and a thread. "The hospital where I work just got new interns. Switching off the teaching mode appears to be harder than I thought."

"No, it's fine." It is the exact opposite of fine.

Claire starts with the two cuts across Matt's breastbone. They're quite shallow, she says, won't even scar that badly. The one on the left side of Matt's abdomen is similar, just a slash, Claire says as she works on the wounds, her fingers operating the needle with professionalism bordering on detachment, her fingers pushing the needle through Matt's skin again and again.

The one on the right side — the hook one, the _hook one_ , Jesus Christ — is trickier, Claire says. The stitches will hold the skin but will have to be changed, will rip no doubt because the wound is deep and still bleeds. But Claire stitches it up too, and puts a bandage over it. It'll hold for now, she assures. It will bleed later, but it will hold.

Alright.

"There are cuts on his back too," Foggy tells her when she's done with the hook wound.

"Alright." Claire beckons him closer. "I will need your help."

"What can I do?"

"You need to hold Matt up when I deal with his back. We can't let him lie on his stomach, so you'll have to prop him up."

"Sure."

Foggy moves Matt's legs to the side and perches on the edge of the couch. Together with Claire they manage to haul Matt into a somewhat sitting position. Foggy puts Matt's head against his shoulder and wraps his hand around his friend's hipbone, quite possibly the one part of him that is safe to hold on to.

Matt's breath is warm on his neck, steady puffs against his skin a proof that Matt is alive, alive, _alive_.

For now, anyway.

"Okay, all done." Claire puts away the bloodied gauze and takes off her gloves. She helps Foggy lay Matt back on the couch, then takes the blanket that Foggy brought from Matt's bedroom off the armrest and pulls it over Matt's body. She looks at Foggy with concern. "Do you need to get back home? Because my shift starts in an hour and someone needs to--"

"I wasn't planning on leaving," Foggy tells her truthfully.

"That's--good. Okay." She packs up her bag. "You have my number now, right?"

"Yeah." Foggy gestures in the general direction of the kitchen, where his phone is. "I've got it."

"If anything happens, call me," Claire tells him. "If he starts shivering, if you think he might have a fever, call me. If his wounds start bleeding profusely again, call me. Got it?"

"Sure, alright." He won't call her. If anything happens, he's taking Matt straight to the hospital, dying wishes be damned. He is not letting a 'no hospitals' be a dying wish, is the point of taking Matt to a hospital.

"You're a good friend," Claire says and picks up her bag, slings it over her shoulder. "Matt has more luck than brains."

And that kind of is the problem.

***

Matt has nothing in his fridge. It's not _that_ surprising, because Matt is not the type to cook extravagant dishes, but he usually has something to eat in his fridge. Cheese. A yoghurt. A half-empty bottle of milk. A solitary tomato. _Something._ But nope, nothing today, just a six-pack of beer.

Foggy drinks two bottles, gulps down their content in rapid succession.

He takes his phone — which managed to turn on again, huzzah, the joys of modern technology, he really should have listened to his sister and bought a Samsung, not a fucking Windows Phone, Nokia wasn't what it used to be in the days of old — and moves to Matt's living room area, seats himself in an armchair opposite the couch. He curls in the armchair and flicks his phone, opens up Candy Crush, because if there is one thing that will make you waste more time than you thought you could waste, it's that devil's app.

He wastes two lives because he's busy observing the slow rise and fall of Matt's chest.

He manages to advance seven levels before he has to drop the phone — again — and scramble to his legs and over to the couch, because he's sure that Matt stopped breathing. Again. Which he didn't, by the way, but Foggy might be traumatised for life by now, and he cannot stop thinking about Matt's chest under his palms, Matt's mouth under his, breathing for Matt, breathing _for Matt_ because he couldn't do it on his own, and what would have happened if he hadn't wasted eleven years of his life watching _Grey's Anatomy_ \--

Foggy sits on the floor with his back to the couch, the sound of Matt's breathing a steady beat in the background noise. He puts his head in his hands and cries and cries, and cries.

***

It's morning and Foggy is on his fifth bottle of beer by the time he hears groaning from the couch and he sees Matt's hand brace against the backrest. He's--Jesus, he's trying to sit up. He'll rip the stitches if he does that, he'll rip them and he'll bleed again. Perhaps Foggy should have asked Claire about something to keep Matt sedated.

"Wouldn't do that if I were you." Matt's hand slides down from the backrest. Foggy slams the fridge door closed. Fuck this, he's drinking Matt's beer. He's earned it. "Then again maybe I would." He walks back towards the living room, eyes glued to Matt's bloodied form. Matt looks--surprised might not be the best word, but there we go. He wasn't expecting Foggy. "The hell do I know about Matt Murdock."

He cannot keep the anger and bitterness out of his voice. He's not even trying to. Matt is alive, Matt is awake, so Foggy thinks it's safe to get pissed now. He can get pissed now. Matt's not dying anymore. Matt's _alive_. And he deserves to get pissed at.

"You stitched me up?" Matt asks.

"Nope," Foggy answers, which is true enough. He doesn't mention keeping Matt alive, breathing for Matt for almost twenty minutes. It's not something he wants to think about. It could have gone so wrong so quickly. And his arms still ache. "That was your nurse friend."

"Claire?" Surprise again.

"You had me get a hold of her after you took a swing at me for trying to get you to the hospital."

He still thinks Matt should be in a hospital. So many things could go so wrong still. If Matt were in a hospital, he would be surrounded by professionals who would be able to help, who would know what to do. He wouldn't be left only with Foggy and his half-assed and totally incorrect medical opinions based on a decade-long exposure to Shonda Rhimes.

"I don't remember," Matt says quietly. Foggy sits down in his armchair. "Sorry."

_Sorry, 'm sorry, sorry, so sorry..._

Foggy has to close his eyes. He nods. Yeah, Matt. You're sorry. But it's not enough.

"She was hot, by the way," Foggy says and the hold that he's had over his anger ever since he lifted that damn fucking mask slips, "but I guess you already knew that, huh?"

Fucking hell. Goddamn fucking hell, shit fuck damn. Jesus. He's been played. By earnest, brave and utterly reckless Matt Murdock, Mr. Stick-to-the-Law, because that's how we take down Fisk. A blind lawyer by day, a ruthless vigilante by night, only he couldn't possibly be blind, and isn't that--That's--That is just--

It's something Foggy cannot wrap his head around, because this is blind Matt Murdock, his best friend, but it's also clearly _not_ , because that is just impossible, that would be some C-list action flick crap. A blind ninja vigilante, come on.

"Foggy--" Matt breathes, and _fuck_ , he sounds like he knows what's coming, like he knows what Foggy will say even before the question forms in Foggy's mind.

"Just tell me one thing, Matt," Foggy says because he _has to know_ , he has to ask and he doesn't care just how much assholery is contained in that question, "are you even really blind?"

"Yes," Matt answers, after a pause that was way too long for Foggy's taste. "Only I--"

"Only you _what_ , Matt?"

Matt swallows and Foggy gets uncomfortably aware of the fact that the man had nothing to drink ever since he stumbled into his living room the night before, _and_ that he had someone blow air _through his mouth_ into his lungs. The inside of Matt's mouth must feel like sand. Foggy should get him some water.

"I can--I can get an image of everything around me," Matt says and Foggy wants to scream or rip his hair out, or both, because isn't that the definition of seeing? "Everything is--it's all red, Foggy, as if the whole world was on fire. And I can--I am aware, of my surroundings, of everything. That's how I know where you are."

He turns his head and looks straight at Foggy, as if he really knew where Foggy was, as if he was _seeing_ Foggy there. Foggy has to stand up, has to turn, he cannot stand Matt's gaze on him, Matt's face turned towards him, his eyes unseeing but focused precisely on him.

"So you can see?" Foggy asks, because isn't that the bottom line? Doesn't it all boil down to that? Whatever damage to his eyes, Matt has _some_ sort of residual sight.

"That's not--You're not--Are you even listening...to what I'm saying?" Matt says, forces the last part out, and it hurts to hear, because he seems to be short of breath, he sounds in pain, and yet he is still _lying_ , actively, by omission, whatever, a lie is a lie.

Foggy is pissed. "Yeah, world on fire, I got it." Matt winces, and Foggy is slightly ashamed that he raised his voice, but the feeling goes away quickly. "But you _can_ see, right?"

"Yeah," Matt admits, "in a--in a manner of speaking, but--"

God fucking damnit. "No, _no_ manner!" Foggy raises his voice again, raises his clenched fist, fuck, he'd like to punch something now, he'd like to punch _Matt_ and shit, that thought immediately makes him feel like an asshole. Then _that_ makes him angrier, because if anyone's an asshole, it's Matt, and he would deserve to be punched if he weren't lying here half-dead. Which is also entirely Matt's fault, _fuck_.

Foggy gets up to the couch, thrusts his hand out, all fingers clenched expect for his middle finger and yeah, go fuck yourself, Murdock. "How many fingers am I holding up?"

It's a game they've been playing for years, Foggy holding his hand up, Matt laughing and stating the wrong number of fingers _every single time_ , but that was a lie too, wasn't it, he knew how many fingers, all this time, _every_ time he knew--

"One," Matt whispers, and it could be a lucky guess, he could be guessing based on Foggy's anger, it's not a stretch to assume Foggy would flip him off, but it's not a guess, Matt just knows, and they both know it.

***

"It was F--it was F--Fisk--It was all Fisk."

Matt's crying now. Perfect. Just, fucking perfect, as if Foggy was feeling too nice, too good, as if this wasn't enough of a nightmare already. These were hard and mean questions, but they needed to be asked, because clearly Matt is not the person Foggy has thought he was, was capable of things that never even crossed Foggy's mind, and damn. Who knew? Maybe blowing up buildings in Hell's Kitchen and killing policemen _was_ something that Matt could have done, after all. Foggy couldn't be the judge of that. He didn't know Matt nearly enough for it.

He could hope, though. And Matt said that it was Fisk, and a tear escaped his eyes and that means something, because Matt hated showing weakness, even in front of Foggy.

Matt swallows visibly — water, shit, Foggy really needs to bring him water — and a small shudder goes through him, and really, blown-up buildings and dead cops are important, but not more than Matt. Matt is here, Matt is _alive_ and so he is Foggy's first priority.

And Matt is--beaten up, bruised, bloodied, half-dead. "He did this to you?" Foggy asks, and tries to pack as much concern as possible into his tone, but even all that concern cannot mask the fear and slight wobbliness of.

"He and Nobu," Matt answers, the asshole that he is, as if that meant anything to Foggy. Well, it does mean something, it means that Fisk has friends and it means that Fisk's friends are Japanese, and fuck, Matt, did you get involved with Yakuza?

"Nobu?" Foggy wishes the name meant something more to him. Is that a businessman? A Wall Street jerk? Lawyer, philantropist, CEO? Low-level bureaucrat? But nope. He's drawing a blank.

"Yeah, I think he's some kinda--ninja." Matt shakes his head lightly, as if he couldn't quite believe that.

You and me both, Matt. "A ninja," Foggy says, and there's disdain now in his voice, because _the fuck_. This is just too--improbable to be true, but on the other hand Matt's imagination is not nearly wild enough to allow him to spin such a tale. A Japanese ninja in New York. A chemical spill that gives you heightened senses. To Foggy it sounds like Matt's life is a plot of a comic book, and not even a good one.

"I think," Matt adds, as if he was trying to make a joke. Maybe he is, hell, this is exactly the kind of thing he and Foggy would normally joke about.

But there's nothing normal about this situation, this is Matt's life they are discussing, not a dumb film Foggy's taken out and decided to narrate for Matt. It's Matt's life and it's the reality, and in reality people don't go into fights with ninjas and leave unscratched, without as much as a muscle pulled. In real life they stumble into their apartments bleeding out and almost die under the hands of their not qualified, terrified best friends.

***

Foggy pockets his phone, feeling more guilty than he thought possible a minute ago. It's clear that Karen didn't really buy the 'car accident' thing. She'd come after Matt later, demand answers, would see that his injuries were not consistent with a hit and run, but fuck, whatever, Matt was an asshole, a complete dickhead, he deserved to be chewed out by her.

"Thank you," the dickhead in question says, fuck it, and sounds so earnest. Like he means it. He thanks Foggy for lying to Karen, for keeping his secret, but not for not freaking out when he collapsed on his living room floor, not for not taking him to the hospital despite Foggy's better instincts, not for keeping him alive, not for getting so much of his blood on Foggy's hands that Foggy is sure he'll never quite wash it off.

His hands are clean now, he washed them when he washed his face earlier — it was bloodied, it was all covered in blood, like his hands, and maybe they're clean, maybe they appear clean now, but Foggy can still _feel_ the blood on them, hot and thick and sticky and _Matt's_.

"Screw you," he spits out, screw you, Murdock, fucking hell. "I just lied to somebody that I care about. I wanna know everything, and don't you leave a _damn_ thing out."

Matt is quiet for a second, then nods.

"I'm--" he starts and then goes quiet. "You know." Yeah, Foggy knows. It's kind of hard to miss when you remove the damn mask yourself, when you have to cut the black shirt off an almost broken body. "It wasn't supposed to be like this."

"What was it supposed to be like, then?" Matt winces. "No, Matt, go on. Enlighten me."

"I didn't plan on getting involved with Fisk, with any of it. I was--I was after the Russians when this all--happened."

"The Russians."

"Yeah." Matt croaks and swallows. God damnit, Nelson, _water_ , stop getting distracted. "They, um, they're involved in human trafficking. Were. Were involved. Then they kidnapped a little boy. I went after them, it was a trap. One of them tried to slit my throat." Matt shrugs, like it was normal. An everyday occurrence, someone tried to slit his throat all the time. Foggy shudders when it hits him that, in the world of Matt Murdock, it just might be true. Jesus. "At which point I ended half-dead in a dumpster and Claire found me."

"So she really did find you with the garbage."

An opportunity presents itself to crack a joke, say something like _always knew you were rubbish, Murdock_ , but Foggy doesn't take it. It's shiny and beautiful and something very _them_ , but he cannot.

"She did." Matt smiles, a bit, tries to, at the very least. "In trash where I belong."

God fucking damnit to hell and beyond. Foggy starts pacing the room, because he needs to _do_ something before he does something worse.

"And then what happened?"

"My lung collapsed. She saved my life. Then I dropped a fire extinguisher on the head of the Russian who was trying to find me. We, uh, _I_ tortured him on Claire's roof."

"You dropped a _fire extinguisher_ on someone's head?" Foggy asks, incredulous. He's not touching the torture part with a feet-long stick. He's just--nope. Not gonna happen. As far as he's concerned, Matt never said that.

"You didn't want me to leave anything out."

Foggy takes a deep breath. "Alright. And then?"

"I dropped him off the roof. And _then_ I found the boy."

"How does Fisk feature into all," Foggy makes an all-encompassing gesture with his hand, "this crap?"

"John Healy," Matt answers and it takes Foggy a moment to place the name, connect it with the suave man in glasses who visited their office and with the large cheque that was still paying for everything office-related. Lots of zeros, that one. "He was an assassin that Fisk hired. He was the first person to tell me Fisk's name."

"Alright...?"

"The Russians were working for Fisk all along," Matt admits. "The bombings, that was Fisk getting rid of them."

"And you just got--swept up in all of that. Right?"

Matt coughs. "Sort of," he rasps.

Alright.

"Alright," Foggy says as he strides towards the couch. Matt blanches a little, and no, Foggy is not going to think about it right now. Foggy puts one knee on the couch, next to Matt's hip, and places his hands on Matt's shoulders, gently, mindful of all the stitching that Claire has done just a few centimeters below. "Up."

"What?"

"You need to sit up, Matt." Foggy's hands move to Matt's armpits, delicate, as if Matt was made of glass. He is, in a way. "Up you go, mister."

Foggy hauls Matt into a semi-sitting position. Matt moans when his back collides with that of the couch, but there's nothing Foggy can do about that. He knows how Matt feels about painkillers. But Matt needs to sit up, because Foggy is not going to allow him to choke on a drink, or to fucking _drown_ in mineral water, and that is something he considers a possibility now, because _Matt fucking Murdock_.

"Wait here," he warns, and Matt snorts. Like he's going anywhere. Well. Also a possibility, Foggy doesn't even want to contemplate just how many times Matt has been beaten to a pulp, bleeding, and yet still came to the office or worse, went out to do his--this--vigilante thing.

Foggy darts into the kitchen. There might be nothing in Matt's fridge, but Matt's counters are stocked a bit better, lots of spices in different jars and boxes, instant noodles — noodles? — and a few small bottles of water tucked in the corner. Foggy takes one out and brings it back to the couch, hands it to Matt, who takes it without problem, perfectly aware of where Foggy's hand is and where the bottle is. Fuck.

Matt drinks the water in big gulps. "Slower," Foggy tells him. "Or you'll choke."

Matt does slow down. "Thank you," he says again. Puts the bottle down.

"So tell me," Foggy says, because a silence is something he cannot stand right now, it's too _loud_ and whoa, what? It occurs to him that he probably shouldn't have drank Matt's beer, he had already had enough alcohol earlier in the bar, he should be drunk off his ass, but he didn't feel particularly drunk. Perhaps the shock of this all sobered him up.

It wasn't a method he would recommend anyone. _Spend your night afraid to close your eyes for a second, because your friend might die in that time!_ Yeah, no. No one deserved that shit.

"Tell you what?" Matt prompts and Foggy realises that he fell silent.

Fucking silence, creeping up on him. Fuck you, silence. "Do you have a lair somewhere? With state-of-art technology? A sidekick?"

Matt shakes his head. "No, I don't have a lair," he says. He turns his head a little, and Foggy follows what would be the line of his sight if Matt could see, but that's the point, isn't it, Matt _can_ see, in a manner of speaking, and what does that even--

Oh. The cupboard under the stairs, and that's some _Harry Potter_ level shit right there. Foggy has never seen this cupboard door open and Matt's been living here for almost two years now. Is that Matt's secret criminal lair? Vigilante lair, fuck? Does he have a supercomputer in there, churning out information on the criminal activity in Hell's Kitchen? A helpful AI?

"The key," Foggy hears Matt say, "is under the hose."

***

A blind old man named Stick. A blind old man named Stick teaching Matt the ancient ways of martial arts and helping him hone his abilities. It's that part that Foggy's mind gets stuck at, his imagination supplying him with an image of a ten or eleven-year-old Matt receiving Important Life Lessons from an individual that Foggy's mind apparently sees as a bizarre cross between Master Shifu and Mr. Miyagi, a montage all complete with the beat of _Kung Fu Fighting_ as a soundtrack.

His mind gets un-stuck the moment Matt mentions heartbeats. "You can hear a heartbeat?" he asks. "From across the room?"

"Helps to anticipate behaviour," Matt explains and no, he doesn't get it, does he. It's not so much about hearing the heartbeat — Foggy can hear a heartbeat of a person he's sleeping with just fine — it's about the 'across the room', about the 'I can do it and no one even knows', about the 'it's a fucking violation of privacy and bodily autonomy'. "When someone's gonna attack--when they're lying."

Matt stresses the last bit with a sad face, but it flies over Foggy's head for the time being.

"That's how you knew Karen was telling the truth when we first met her, at the precinct."

"Yeah," Matt admits.

Foggy fights the urge to rip his hair out. He just clenches his fists next to his temples. "You listened to her heartbeat without her permission?" Jesus. Gross. And violating. "We're lawyers, we--You can't _do that_! There's a system in place, and it's weird and invasive and--"

_When they're lying._

Oh.

_Oh._

"Wait." Because wait, wait wait _wait_ , back up, from the beginning. Lying. Heartbeats. And _lying_ , and what? "Are you telling me that, since I've known you, any time I wasn't telling the truth--you knew?"

There are tears in Matt's eyes and he looks down. Puts his head down, shit. Shit, shit.

"And what? You just played along?"

Foggy can think of a hundred times he's lied about something. Small things, really. Small dumb things of little importance. 

He gets easily distracted while shopping. _"Did you remember to buy strawberries?" "They've, uh, run out, sorry."_

_"Hey, Foggy, did you return that book to the library?" "Yeah, sure!"_ He did return it the next day, he even paid the fine because it was his fault that Matt was charged in the first place.

Matt's birthday, their first year as roommates. _"Foggy, please tell me you didn't spend a lot of money on me." "Pff, of course I didn't, I wouldn't spend half of my monthly budget on a present for_ you _, dumbass."_

_Are you alright, Foggy? Yeah, yeah, I'm fine._

Matt grimaces, nods. "Basically."

Foggy strides up to him, leans over, a finger pointed accusatorily in his direction. "If you weren't half-dead, I'd kick your ass, Murdock. Am I lying about that?!"

Matt might start crying any second now, but his voice is steady. "No."

Foggy cannot get the hurt out of his. Doesn't even try. Let Matt hear it. Foggy is not going to lie. Foggy would never have deceived him like this. "Was anything ever real with us?"

Matt chokes up at that. "How can you--How can you even _ask_ that. Foggy. Foggy, _Foggy_ \--"

But Foggy _can_ ask that, because there's one memory that his mind keeps pushing at him, yet one more instant of Foggy lying and Matt — apparently — just rolling with it, and that is quite possibly the worst one, and it doesn't matter that they ended up _here_ , because even though they did, it might still mean that their whole friendship is built on a lie.

 _"You're blind, right?" "Uh, yeah, so they tell me. I hope that won't be a problem." "Why would it?" Really, what did he care that the guy was blind, and--"Oh--You're, you're my roommate!" And this wasn't what he was expecting, this wasn't what he was expecting at all. When Brett went to college he met Patrick, who would become Brett's best friend for life, would introduce Brett to his sister, would be happy when Brett proposed to Ginny. That was the kind of friendship Foggy hoped for in law school, a friend with whom he could go to the games, play baseball, watch movies, play dumb games on his Playstation that was still sitting in one of his suitcases, unpacked. A blind roommate put a dent in those plans, and it wasn't that Foggy thought--no, but--it was absolutely fine to share a room with a disabled person--but why did it have to be_ him _who ended up with the blind roommate-- "Uh, um, Matt Murdock." "Foggy Nelson."_

And Matt knew, didn't he? Knew that Foggy's heart skipped when he realised, knew that a part of that cheerfulness was strained, was fake, at least at the beginning. Matt knew, he's always known, _Jesus fucking Christ_.

Foggy collapses onto the armchair, hides his face in his hands. God. Matt was his best friend, the best friend Foggy could have ever asked for, much better than Foggy hoped he would find when he first stepped into the halls of Columbia Law School. He's kicked himself for his initial brief reaction over the years, has first kicked himself at the end of that orientation week when it became obvious that Matt was an absolute delight to have around, that he would quickly become Foggy's best of friends, that Foggy really hit the jackpot with the roommate assignation.

His only consolation has always been the firm knowledge that Matt never knew what sort of a tool and asshole and dickhead Foggy was for the whole first five minutes of their initial meeting. But that wasn't true, now, Matt has known, has _always known_ and just _went with it_.

Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck fuckity fuck.

"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, Foggy," Matt murmurs brokenly on the couch. "I just didn't know how to tell you, I've always wanted to, didn't know how, you were my only friend, Foggy, Foggy, I wanted to tell you so many times, sometimes it _hurt_ that I couldn't, that I--that I--that--"

He's breathing too hard. Too deep, but in short, stuttery inhales, shit, fuck, he's going to hyperventilate, he's panicking--

Foggy slides off the armchair and kneels in front of the couch, puts a hand on Matt's covered knee and squeezes to draw Matt's attention. "Slowly," he says and Matt chokes while gulping on air, "breathe slowly, okay. Do it with me. Breathe in and exhale, long and steady. See? Okay, again. In and out, inhale and exhale, slowly. Good."

He manages to get Matt's breathing under control, which is good, because he's pretty sure Matt doesn't have any paper bags in his apartment.

"You should eat something," Foggy says. Mothering Matt has always been a good distraction and damn, he needed a distraction now. "I can't hear your stomach, but I doubt you've had anything to eat in the last twelve hours. You're wounded and you were bleeding, normally you'd be on an IV drip, but we don't currently have that, so some food it is."

"I'm not hungry, Foggy," Matt says and sounds tired.

Foggy gets up from the floor. "Well tough luck."

***

He ends up making the noodles. There's a bottle of ketchup in one of Matt's cupboards, and a can of tuna, and Foggy mixes it all up together. It doesn't taste nearly as disgusting as it should. He puts it all in a pan, heats it on the cooker because Matt seems to have something against microwaves; divides the noodles into two bowls, putting slightly more in Matt's, because Foggy might be hungry as a wolf, but Matt is the invalid here and he will eat, whether he feels like it or not.

Foggy hands Matt one of the bowls and Matt takes it without a word. Foggy wolfs down his portion quickly and puts the bowl down and away on the floor. There used to be a coffee table here.

"Tell me about that--world on fire thing," he prompts. Matt puts his bowl away and Foggy notices it's still half full. Well. It means that it's also half empty, then, and that's sort of a victory. "What 'manner' did you mean?"

"I--I'm _blind_ , Foggy."

Hardly news, that. "But you _can_ see something."

"No. It's--" Foggy makes a noise at the back of his throat and Matt holds up a hand. "Let me finish."

Foggy nods. "I nodded."

"I can--see, fine, let's go with that. But it has nothing to do with my eyes. It doesn't matter if they're open or closed, it's all the same for me."

"Okay." So it wasn't any sort of residual sight.

"It's my other senses. The sounds of things. Touch, the feel of them. The smells, it all allows me to--to imagine what my surroundings look like. What's where, its general shape, and so on. Remember, I told you once that my hearing was good."

_Trust me. Can't see worth a shit, but my hearing's spectacular._

"Spectacular," Foggy whispers.

"I can _hear_ where things are. There's noise everywhere, you know, and objects reflect the soundwaves at different frequencies. That's mostly it."

"So you're like--Like bats," Foggy asks more than states.

"Bats aren't blind. We've been over that."

"No, I mean what bats can do. Echolocation." Matt makes a pleased, approving sound. "Or dolphins. Or like a sonar."

"Yes, I suppose you could say that." Matt reaches out for the half-forgotten bottle of water and takes a sip.

"So you can imagine the general layout of--well, everywhere. Everything."

Matt nods. "Unless there are interfering sounds, like a high-pitched whistle, some mechanical sounds." He laughs. "But I'm still _blind_ , Fog. I can tell you how many fingers you're holding up because of the sound they make when you extend them, but I cannot tell you what face you're making. I can't see your expressions. I don't know what you look like."

Oh. Oh, and that--

"Okay."

"Okay?" Matt asks. "Just--just like that? _Okay?_ "

Foggy shakes his head and refrains from telling Matt that he's done so. Matt knows. "Just like that. And there," he says, "it wasn't so bad, was it? Hardly a difficult explanation. Did you really have to lie about it for five years?"

Matt makes a pained sound. Foggy sighs and leans back in the armchair. His head hits the backrest with a soft thud.

"Eat your fucking noodles, Murdock."

***

Foggy is in the kitchen washing the dishes. It took almost two hours, but Matt managed to stomach the bowl of noodles. The smell and taste of it was probably killing him — now at least Foggy knew where did Matt's thing against processed junk food come from — but that was the only thing Foggy was able to whip up from Matt's supplies. 

He should go and get Matt some groceries.

No, fuck, he shouldn't, Matt was a lying asshole.

Yeah, but he was _his_ lying asshole.

Damn.

Foggy runs a wet hand across his eyes. This was too much, he didn't sign up for any of this shit--Only--It was their thing, wasn't it. Matt Murdock doing dumb shit and Foggy Nelson suffering because of that, only amped up to maximum.

"Foggy?"

Foggy drops the hand. "Yeah?"

"I need to get up."

That riles Foggy up. Why the fuck would you need to get up, Murdock, do you _want_ to rip your stitches and bleed to death? 

"Bathroom," Matt adds, no doubt reading Foggy's sudden anger from the speed of his heartbeat or the smell of his sweat, or some shit like that.

"Sure, right." Foggy moves back to the couch and leans into Matt's personal space. He helps Matt sling an arm around his shoulders and sneaks his own to hoist Matt up, latches onto his hip, mindful of the injuries. Somehow they manage to stand, and Matt is gripping the blanket with his free hand, modesty, Murdock? "Drop the damn blanket."

Matt drops the damn blanket, because what modesty, he's shared first a room and then an apartment with Foggy for three years, there was not an inch of him that Foggy hasn't seen at one point or another. Plus, dragging the blanket across the apartment and into the bathroom might simply be a bad idea, Matt might trip on it, fall, bash his head on some counter, or the fucking cracked panelling--

Okay, not going there.

Foggy opens the bathroom door with one hand and helps Matt inside.

"I'll be fine," Matt insists and bats Foggy's hands away. "You can leave me alone for five minutes."

"Fine."

Foggy leaves the bathroom and closes the door behind him. He doesn't go anywhere, though. He sits down next to the door, on that fucking cracked landing of Matt's stairs, and waits. Waits. And waits. When ten minutes pass he is tempted to drag the door open, barge inside, and drag Matt out. Something might have happened, he might have slipped on the floor, shit, Foggy didn't check if it was dry--

A choked sound draws him back to his feet. "Foggy?"

Foggy wrenches the door open and steps inside. Matt is sitting on the toilet seat, pressing a hand to his side, a crumbled, miserable expression etched on his face. A smell of copper hits Foggy's nostrils, and if Foggy can smell that, it must be awful for Matt.

"I think I'm--" Matt presses harder and hisses. "I think I'm bleeding."

Okay, that was bad.

"Okay, that's--fine, it'll be fine," Foggy says and aims for cheerful. Misses by a mile. It's not even uplifting or comforting. "We just need to get you out of here."

He crouches on the tiles and lets Matt lean on him, shoulders most of Matt's weight. He stands up slowly, puts an arm around Matt to steady him against his body. He takes slow steps so that Matt can keep up. He needs to cooperate with him here, because Foggy isn't sure he'd be able to carry him.

"Couch," he tells Matt, out of habit. Helps Matt sit down and Matt immediately leans back. Lolls back, more like it, and Foggy's heart gets stuck somewhere in his throat. "Hey. Hey, don't pass out."

"'m not," and he so totally is going to.

Foggy rips off the bandage and yup, the hook wound is bleeding again. He weighs his options — hospital or Claire? — but since it's not bleeding as bad as before, and Matt is still mostly conscious, decides to go with Claire. Damn it. Damn him. Don't damn her, though, she's nice.

He takes his phone out from his pocket and finds Claire's number, hits 'dial' and waits. Not long, thankfully.

"Claire?" he breathes before she has the chance to say anything.

"Foggy," she greets him. "What's wrong."

"The hook wound," Foggy says and Matt grimaces on the couch, mumbles something that sounds like 'shoge', "it started bleeding again."

"I told you it would happen." Claire sighs into her phone. "Okay, tell me, how bad is it? Are any of the stitches ripped?"

Foggy glances at the bleeding cut. "No, I don't think so."

"Then it's just seeping blood. That's--well, to be expected in these circumstances. There are some bandages in Matt's bathroom, I left them there. You have to take them and change the dressing of the wound. There's really nothing else you could do."

"Bandages, bathroom, got it," Foggy repeats. "Thanks, Claire."

"'re awfully chummy," Matt slurs.

Foggy moves back to the bathroom. "Yeah, well," he says over his shoulder. "We've both been fucked by you so I guess we're entitled." He grimaces. Ugh, no, that's--not what he meant to say. " _Metaphor_ , Murdock," he stresses as he rummages through Matt's bathroom cupboard until he finds the bandages and even a bottle of hospital-grade disinfectant, thanks, Claire. "I hope."

He gets back to the living room in time to notice Matt shivering. Shit. People can get cold due to a blood loss, right? Shit, shit, shit fuck damn.

"Just a moment, you dickhead, okay?" He sits on the couch next to Matt's shivering form. Pours a little of the disinfectant right onto Matt's stomach and Matt hisses at that, well, _sorry_ , but it's not like they have sterile gauze here. He should stock up on that. "Almost done."

Foggy dresses the wound in silence and when he's done, he drops the bloodied bandage onto the floor, with the rest of the bloodied gauze and the remnants of Matt's shirt. He should throw it all away, or at least clean it up.

"'m c--cold," Matt whines. Foggy presses the back of his hand to his forehead, but no, it doesn't seem that Matt's sporting a fever. Maybe it's just exhaustion.

"Wait here, alright, I'll bring you some clothes."

He all but runs to Matt's bedroom and rummages through Matt's wardrobe. He finds a pair of thick sweatpants, a comfy hoodie and a pair of woolen socks that Foggy's dumb sister gave Matt as a present one Christmas. He grabs all three items and rushes back to the living room, dumps it all on the couch and proceeds to help Matt put it on.

They've managed to beat the sweatpants and the hoodie into submission when Foggy's phone rings. He checks caller id. Brett. Well, sorry, Brett. Foggy cancels the call.

"You're still a bastard and I'm still pissed, got it?" Matt nods. Foggy's phone rings again. What the hell, Brett. Foggy rolls his eyes, but decides to take the call. He gets up and moves towards Matt's bedroom, away from the earshot of a regular human being, but Matt--Well. "But at least now you're not a cold bastard."

***

"Sometimes the law isn't enough."

"And of course _you_ are the person who decides when that is."

Foggy leaves Matt on the couch and ventures back into the kitchen. The urge to punch something comes back with a new wave of anger, so Foggy does end up punching something. The door of Matt's fridge suffers in the attack, but not more than Foggy's knuckles.

"Foggy?" Matt asks from the couch, concerned. He can't really turn around so he didn't see that embarrassing display. See--well.

"I'm fine," Foggy says through gritted teeth.

"It didn't sound like it."

"I said I was fucking _fine_!"

Matt doesn't seem startled by the outburst. Perhaps Foggy's heartbeat told him that it was coming. Jesus H. fucking Christ.

Foggy takes a deep breath, trying to calm himself. _In and out, just like you told Matt._ In and out, one breath, two breaths--

_Two breaths, one, two. Thirty presses._

He dives into Matt's cupboards and starts very loudly moving things around, because he cannot stand looking at Matt or Matt hearing his hitching sob. But his rummaging through the cupboards is not entirely fruitless. He finds a forgotten box of tea. He comes back up with the box in hand and puts in the water. He makes the tea and brings two mugs into the living room.

There definitely used to be a coffee table here. Never before did he have to put two mugs of steaming organic cranberry tea on the floor.

Matt sniffs. "Cranberry?" he asks.

"Yes." Foggy hands him one of the mugs. Matt has emptied the bottle of water some time ago, and the noodles were mostly cold and disgusting by the time he chewed through them. He needed to get something warm in his stomach; Foggy noticed that, despite the warm clothes, his shivers didn't stop. Fine. He will force that tea down Matt's throat if he has to.

He doesn't have to force it. Matt drinks it all on his own, then hands back an empty mug. Progress. Foggy takes both mugs and brings them to the kitchen, deposits them in Matt's sink. He starts the water, but doesn't wash them, splashes his face instead. He should take a shower. He should take a shower and change his clothes, because while his shirt by some miracle avoided being splashed with blood, the knees of his dark trousers are stained with it. It's a good thing Matt can't see them, but perhaps he can smell.

God, he's tired.

From the kitchen he notices that Matt's dark head is no longer visible over the backrest of the couch. He quickly moves from behind the kitchen counters and gets to Matt; his heart stops for a second when he sees that Matt is no longer sitting, that he collapsed sideways on the couch and curled up on himself. He lets himself breathe when it becomes obvious that Matt merely fell asleep, didn't die in those five minutes that Foggy wasn't looking at him.

Foggy sighs. Goes into Matt's bedroom and drags the biggest, fluffiest pillow he can find. He drops it onto the floor next to the couch, then kneels next to it. Matt's face is bruised and swollen, his eyes have dark bags underneath it, why didn't he notice that before. He brushes an unruly strand of dark hair off Matt's forehead and sighs again. He eases his hand under Matt's head, cups his ear, lifts the head. With his free hand he grabs the pillow and puts in on the couch, then gently places Matt's head on it.

"Right," he says and smacks his lips. Raises to his feet. "Right."

Matt's sleeping, but Foggy cannot just leave him. People die in their sleep all the time, like his Great-Uncle Spencer, or mum's friend Mrs. Debinsky. He can't just _leave_ , no matter how much he wants to, no matter how pissed and angry at Matt he is.

"Right," he repeats into the silence of the apartment. 

Right. So, order of business.

He gets the dirty gauze and the leftovers from Matt's ruined costume into a trash bag, ties it, puts it into another bag and ties that one. Cannot be too careful, he thinks when he stashes it next to the fridge.

He should really get a shower, but not _yet_ , because the smell of stale copper is starting to get irritating, and it is within Foggy's power to do something about it, so he does.

He takes a bucket out from underneath Matt's sink and fills it with water. Fishes out a cleaning detergent from the bathroom, and he pours a generous amount into the bucket. He takes it and a sponge from the sink, and walks towards the stairs. He puts the bucket down and looks at the floor.

It really is an ugly stain.

He sighs and gets down on his knees, drops the sponge in the bucket, squeezes, rinses, takes it out. His trousers are going to be ruined after this, but he was going to throw them away anyway, no point in trying to get the blood off them, he'd still know it was there, he'd still know Matt's blood was there.

He scrubs the floor and tries not to think, but his brain has never been helpful and so it provides him with the greatest hits of last night, the terror, the fear, the anger, the concern, the overriding thought of Matt Matt _Matt_.

_I do not allow you to die, Matt, alright?_

He must be really out of shape, God, he's sweating like a pig. Sweat is running down his face, a steady trickle down his cheeks, it drips down his nose and onto the floor that just refuses to stop being blood-stained, no matter how hard Foggy scrubs. 

_You can't die. You just _can't_ , alright._

He squeezes his eyes shut and carries on scrubbing, and there's more wetness on his face now, and shit, he's not sweating at all, is he, he's just crying, crying, crying--

_Matty, please just don't die on me, not like this, Matt_ , Matt _\--_

He drops the sponge and it lands on the floor with a _plop_ , right in the middle of the mess he's made, wood stained dark with blood and water, a pile of reddish foam from all the scrubbing. He brings his arm up to wipe his face, but he doesn't, he hides it in the crook of his arm instead and allows himself to weep.

***

Matt sleeps for four hours. It's already evening and the billboard outside is glowing brightly by the time he wakes up. Foggy has managed to get himself together, finished cleaning the floor to the best of his abilities, rinsed the sponge, rinsed the bucket. There's no evidence of him ever cleaning anything, none at all. Well, perhaps the floor is slightly less stained, but it's not like Matt will ever see the difference.

"You wanna say something," Matt observes.

A fucking showoff.

"Really don't."

"Your breathing changes when you're about to."

Foggy shakes his head and voices his sentiment. "Now you're just showing off."

"Say what you need to say."

Foggy turns away from the window and looks at Matt. He's still curled up on the couch, in those ridiculous socks that Candace thought would be _funny_. He's not looking at Foggy, but when is he ever actually looking at anything?

"You really think that's a good idea?"

"Perhaps," Matt says. "Help me up."

Foggy huffs in indignation, but, God help him, he does, saunters closer to the couch, helps Matt sit up, helps him get comfortable. He might be pissed at Matt, he might want to punch him, repeatedly, but it's still _Matt_ , and he cannot make himself stop taking care of Matt. Matt needs him, whether he likes it or not. Foggy rather thinks he doesn't.

"Go on," Matt prompts.

And Foggy explodes.

"Are you completely out of your fucking mind?! What did you think, buying some dumb paintball gear on Amazon! And then what? Playing a vigilante? Running around Hell's Kitchen at night? Did you even think this through, Matt? Did you ever stop for a second to think whether this was a good idea?"

"This wasn't some reckless decis--"

"Like _hell_ it wasn't! You are an utterly stupid, dumb, reckless person! You don't think things through, Matt, not always. You could have got yourself killed a million times over! Did you ever think of that? Did you think of what that might do to your family?"

"I don't have a--" Matt cuts himself off, but not before he says too much.

"Right." Foggy nods, a bitter smile plastered on his face, even though Matt won't see it. "Newsflash, then, Matt: I'm your family. And clearly you haven't thought of that, but it would fucking _kill me_ to be called by the police in the middle of the night, to have to go to the morgue and identify your body. And that's how it's going to end. One day you won't make it back to your house, and you'll bleed out in an alley behind some bar. Or you will make it back, but you won't be lucky enough to have someone nearby when you stumble in and collapse and you heart stops beating--"

God fucking damnit. Foggy takes a deep breath and tries to calm his racing heart. He presses the heel of his hand between his eyes. Great, he's got a headache now.

"You don't know that," Matt says. "You don't know that it will end like that."

"Of course I know! This is real life, not a dumb video game! From some things you just don't get back up, and there is no saving point to go back to!"

"Foggy, I'm not reckless."

Jesus fucking hell, the level of denial.

"You run around dressed like a moron, beating people up!"

"It's not that simple and _you know it_."

"No, I don't know shit! Not about this!" Foggy moves to stand behind his armchair. "I mean, how--" Words fail him. His hands drop useless. It's beyond his abilities to understand. "Okay," he says, trying, _trying_ to understand despite everything, because this is fucking _Matt_ , "so you got these, whatever you call them, when you were a kid--How do you go from that to what you're doing now?"

And Matt, God help him, God help them both, tells him. He must have taken that 'don't leave anything out' command seriously, because he doesn't, and he tells Foggy the story, and it's more disturbing and hopeless and dark than he could have imagined, and perhaps Foggy does understand, after all, just a little. But--

But.

"Maybe you just can't stop yourself."

"I don't want to stop."

***

The hook wound starts bleeding again, but just a little. Matt insists on cleaning it himself, this time.

"You're gonna get yourself killed, if you keep this up," Foggy says, again, because it didn't seem to have an effect on Matt the first time he said it. "You know that, right?"

Matt puts on a new bandage. "I can take care of myself," he says.

A whole new level of denial, this is.

***

A new tactic, then, because apparently the thought of death — no matter how horrific and traumatising it would be for the people close to him — doesn't seem to faze Matt an awful lot.

"You ever stopped to think what would happen if you went to jail? Or worse?" And oh, he seems to have him now, Matt makes that upside-down smile face that he can nail to perfection and picks on the rim of his hoodie. He's never looked more like a lost kid. "You really think that anyone would believe that I didn't know what you were doing?"

And he knew _now_ , on top of that. Matt's making little sobbing noises now, and it really looks like he didn't think about any of this. It's awful, what it says about him. About them. About how much Matt cares about the people in his life.

"That Karen didn't know?" Foggy continues and with some satisfaction notices that his anger has made him immune to the sight of Matt crying.

"This city--needs me in that mask--Foggy."

And that's really all that can be said on the topic of Matt Murdock and his devotion to anything. He loves his city. Yeah, Foggy gets that, he loves New York and Hell's Kitchen as well. But he loves his family too, he loves _Matt_ , and for him the priorities are a bit different. It's kind of funny that he assumed Matt felt similar. Funny and sad at the same time.

"Maybe you're right," Foggy says and Matt must hear something in his voice, because his eyes fill with fresh tears. "Maybe it does. But I _don't_. I only ever needed my _friend_."

Matt is trying so hard not to cry. Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck. Foggy's trying too, and he succeeds better than Matt. Maybe it's the years of seeing your face in the mirror and teaching yourself to school your features into a mask of perfect calm when needed. Matt never really learnt that, at least not when Foggy is concerned. When Matt feels something, it's written on his face.

"I wouldn't have kept this from you, Matt." He can't believe that Matt did, that he's kept so many things from Foggy, that he's lied and lied and _lied_ for years. "Not from you."

Matt shakes his head. "You don't know that," he says and sounds like he's trying to convince himself, not Foggy. "You don't know that."

"Yeah," Foggy says with a finality in his voice that registers in Matt a second too late, "I do."

Foggy grabs his jacket from the armchair and marches out of the apartment. He hears Matt move behind him, hears his desperate _Foggy--Foggy_ , but doesn't stop, doesn't turn back. He doesn't slam the door behind him through sheer force of manners instilled by his Grandma Molly.

He's tempted to, but he doesn't. God knows it wouldn't be helpful if Mrs. Dunberg called the police now, what with the half-dead man inside and bloodstains everywhere.

He leans against the corridor wall just outside Matt's apartment and take a deep breath. One, two, three. He hears the wail, a desperate and heart-wrenching animal-like noise from the inside. It's more than grief, it's almost inhuman in its desolation. And still. He doesn't go back. He--

He can't.

He can't go back.

He takes one more breath, puts on his jacket, straightens it as much as he can, and leaves the building without a single glance back.


End file.
